shore bird
1
4.0
- noun
- /ʃɔr bɜrd/
:
ave costera
- With few hikers out that morning, I enjoyed the company of shore birds along my walk.
Examples
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While walking along the beach, I spotted a shore bird wading in the shallow water.
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Then he saw a large shore bird flying close.
Fiction book (1994) -
There are attractive wading birds, raptors, shore birds, and other tropical wildlife all over Florida.
Academic text (2006) -
And this seems to be true in things like the fallaropes, polyandra, shore birds and cassowaries, and in button quail.
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In his wet mouth, Kiyoshi can make wave sounds and can imitate the call of shore birds and the full-throated cries of beach dogs that lunge through the surf, eyes on the wings above them.
Fiction book (2000) -
Watch a brown pelican paddle by overhead, ring-billed and laughing gulls, too early in the year for there to be shore birds on Rest Beach at all as the disk of the sun lifts out of the Florida Straits.
Fiction book (2001) -
They join the pelicans, cranes, cormorants, and myriad other shore birds in crisscrossing the jetties, lagoons, islands, and sandbars of the larger bay.
Blog text (22) -
At the estuary, various shore birds can be seen foraging for food in the mud.
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Many shore birds migrate every year to warmer climates for the breeding season.
Synonyms
3
3.7
A bird that lives by the sea and searches mud or sand for food
1
3.6
A bird with long legs that stands in shallow water to catch fish and insects
A bird that walks in shallow water at the sea edge to find food
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound meaning is directly compositional: a 'shore bird' is a bird associated with the shore, which a B1 learner can infer from knowing 'shore' and 'bird'. This follows a common noun + noun compounding pattern (location + creature) found across many languages, so the sense is immediately predictable.
Etymology
Shore bird shows a simple picture: a bird walking on the wet shore and searching in the sand or shallow water for food when the tide goes out. So, the name came to mean 'a bird that lives along the shore and in shallow water'.